If You're A Fan Of CJ John Roberts ...

You'll want to read Jonathan Turley's article today:

After Taking The Bait, The Chief Justice Prepares To Switch On The ACA

No. Don't get your hopes up. Roberts isn't about to switch to being against the ACA. He's apparently about to simply contradict himself and switch his rationalizations for supporting the idea that the ACA is constitutional. If you don't feel like reading the article, here's the twitter version:

Jonathan Turley

@JonathanTurley

...Roberts could create a bizarre precedent: he saved the ACA in 2012 by declaring the individual mandate essential and then could save the ACA again in 2020 by declaring that it not essential. If that seems confusing, welcome to the world of Chief Justice Roberts on the ACA.

Roberts effectively acknowledged that he was a chump in accepting the arguments on the individual mandate eight years ago. For years, Roberts has been on a collision course with himself — and yesterday he had a one-person pileup.

...What is interesting is that Roberts took the bait and now appears ready to do his own switch. He suggested that he would again save the ACA through severance but do so on the basis that his earlier position is now invalid.

It's a bit difficult to imagine that his colleagues have much respect for Roberts.

Common Sense From Jonathan Turley

Jonathan Turley

I am still unclear on the insistence to end any challenges before we actually see the extent of alleged irregularities. I have expressed skepticism on past claims, but we now have sworn allegations of fraud. Why not look at the evidence?

Pulling A Rosie Ruiz: The Risky Business of Calling American Presidential ElectionsBeing a legal analyst often makes you a killjoy at a party.  As millions broke out in celebration over the calling of the election for Joe Biden (including most of my immediate family), I watched w…https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/08/pulling-a-rosie-ruiz-the-risky-business-of-calling-american-presidential-elections/

Again, we would not know if we have systemic rather than episodic problems until we look at this evidence. It is not about sharpies or poll watchers. It is about possible problems in software and authentication systems. What is the harm in allowing courts to review such claims? 

...The demand for clear evidence of systemic violations during the tabulation stage is bizarre. We would not necessarily have such evidence, which is largely held by election officials. As expected, we have a series of localized affidavits and allegations of intentional fraud... 

...It is like saying that a patient has low white blood cell level but insisting on stopping testing if you cannot conclusively say that there is cancer. These initial allegations may or may not be indicative of a more systemic problem. Let's find out.

Jonathan Turley: The Biden Dog That Didn't Bark

Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University, has moved on from the Judge Amy confirmation hearings and is now addressing the Biden Crime Family story. He has a nice article at Fox today, in which he likens the Biden campaign non-responses to the dog that didn't bark in the famous Sherlock Holmes case, The Adventure of Silver Blaze. In The Adventure of Silver Blaze, a favored race horse disappears shortly before a big race. Holmes notes that the dog on guard failed to bark--a very curious fact, which Holmes recommends to the attention of the local police inspector

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The metaphor works like this: If the Biden campaign is the dog, then it failed to bark at least three times, and each failure to bark corresponds to what should have been a predictable response to the Rudy Giuliani revelations stemming from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. Each non-bark corresponds to an expected register of bark that we would have expected to hear:

Jonathan Turley Takes Sullivan To Task

Jonathan Turley is a professor at the George Washington Law School. He's a liberal who is increasingly finding himself at odds with other liberals, who seem to care little for the rule of law, for whom ethics is merely a means to an end. Power.

Tonight Turley expressed his disquiet with Sullivan's moves in the Flynn case, in which Sullivan has exhibited a Captain Ahab like fixation on "getting" Flynn. Professor Turley:

Judge Sullivan has now appointed a retired judge to look into “whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.” Thus, the court is not only considering denying an uncontested motion for dismissal but [is also] considering a new charge based on Flynn's effort to withdraw his plea.

Consider the implications for many cases where defendants seek to withdraw pleas due to prosecutorial abuse. It would create a threat of a judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants. 

Judge Sullivan was previously criticized for suggesting that Flynn could be charged with treason. He is now allowing third parties to make arguments in a criminal case on an unopposed motion. In addition, he is exploring a charge that he might be able to bring against Flynn.

These extraordinary moves by the court are increasingly discomforting. This is a single charge where significant jail time was neither warranted nor expected. The Court's effort to import arguments and explore new charges could be raised on appeal given the prior record.

[T]here comes a point where the Court appears too invested in the punishment of a defendant and too active in creating alternatives to dismissal. As a criminal defense attorney, I find these moves unnerving, particularly when prosecutorial abuse has been raised by DOJ and others.

Did Trump Claim To Be An Absolute Monarch?

Joel Pollak at Breitbart has an excellent article debunking the central Dem claim that their impeachment theater is a revolt against a president who claims the powers of an absolute monarch--a sort of We The People against George III Redux. That was the tenor of Pelosi's bizarre address, and it came up repeatedly in the Nadler committee testimony by law professors. Nadler's legal adviser, Norm Eisen, also raised it. But, as Pollak demonstrates, Democrats Used Deceptively Edited Video of Trump in Judiciary Committee Impeachment Hearing. In other words, they lied. Or, they continued their lying.

Follow the link for Pollak's full article. What I'll offer here is simply a digest focusing on Trump's actual words and comparing his actual words to the misrepresentations by Dems and their law prof lackeys.

Pollak begins by quoting Pelosi's address, in which she accuses Trump of claiming that he can do "anything he wants":

The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when he says and acts upon the belief ‘Article II says I can do whatever I want.’ No. His wrongdoing strikes at the very heart of our Constitution.

Hmmm. When did Trump actually say that? Pollak traces those words back to an interview Trump gave to George Stephanopoulos back in June, in which Trump discussed the fact that as president he had the power to fire Robert "Bob" Mueller:

A Cure For Your Contempt Ailment?

Is this you? You know Jerry Nadler's a clown, you know the contempt vote against AG Barr is a joke, but you still can't stop reading about it?

A cure for what ails you just might be Jonathan Turley's article today: Dems' Contempt Case Against Barr Is Unbelievably Weak.

Here's who Jonathan Turley is:

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and represented the House of Representatives in its successful challenge to executive actions under the Affordable Care Act.

He's also a super liberal, who nevertheless testified in favor of Barr's confirmation as AG because he regards Barr as a terrific lawyer and a man who would bring much needed integrity to the government's top legal position. Turley is one of those strange liberals who cares about the integrity of our institutions and the rule of law. Go figure, eh?

The House Judiciary Committee is voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress and to secure a vote of the entire House of Representatives in order to send the matter to federal court. The problem is that the contempt action against Barr is long on action and short on contempt. Indeed, with a superficial charge, the House could seriously undermine its credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House. ... 

As someone who has represented the House of Representatives, my concern is that this one violates a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.” This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. ... 

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler ... raised three often repeated complaints against Barr in that he failed to release an unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, allegedly lied twice to Congress, and refused to appear before the committee. Yet, notably, the only claim the committee seeks to put before a federal court is the redaction of the report. That seems rather curious since, if Barr lied or refused a subpoena as House leaders claim, it normally would be an easy case of contempt. The reason for this move is that House Democrats know both claims would not withstand even a cursory judicial review.

With that introduction, Turley turns to the claims of "false statements" and shows exactly how frivolous they are and why House Democrats don't dare bring them before a court. He then turns to Barr's supposed "failure to appear," and draws the same conclusion: it's all in bad faith. "The Democrats wanted to manufacture a conflict ..."

MULTI-UPDATES: Michael Cohen In A Nutshell

Mark Penn begins his latest, and typically excellent, article with the following trenchant observation:

After bilking corporations out of millions of dollars for "insight" into his client, failing to pay his taxes, trying to entrap his client, and pleading guilty to lying to Congress, now-disbarred attorney Michael Cohen took his best shots at President Donald Trump, calling him a liar and a cheat. The testimony brought Congress to a new low after years of dead-end investigations of supposed Russia-Trump conspiracies.

It may be worthwhile to briefly review how we got to this point, and what the Cohen angle is really about.

Like just about everything else in the Russia Hoax, and as nearly as anyone can tell, Michael Cohen's travails began with the infamous Steele "dossier." When she wasn't honing her mid-life ham radio hobbyist skills, Nellie Ohr--former CIA analyst and wife of Bruce Ohr, a high DoJ official and (yes) FBI informant--browsed through NSA databases on behalf of Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, in search of opposition research information regarding anyone associated with Trump. Courtesy of James Comey and the FBI, who made their access to NSA databases freely available to Nellie and Fusion GPS.

In early summer of 2016, as the campaign season was heating up, Nellie discovered that a Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague. Whether or not Nellie really assumed that the world only contained one Michael Cohen who might travel to Prague we cannot say for sure. However, by fall of 2016 the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump and his campaign was in need of a refreshed narrative, due to the fact that none of the original subjects were any longer with the Trump campaign. Either assuming for no apparent reason that only one Michael Cohen existed or, more likely, figuring that the coincidence of names was close enough for government work, the FBI and Chris Steele wove a new narrative about Cohen as the go between Trump and his masters in Moscow. And that was crucial to obtaining the first FISA: